Solid-State LiDAR Emerges As Flavor Of Choice For Self-Driving Cars

“According to analyst firm Frost & Sullivan, over 90% of all driverless cars in development have solid-state LiDARs.”

Solid-state LiDAR is cheap, robust, and compact in size — this is why the device is seen as the LiDAR of choice for future high-volume production of level 3 and level 4 cars.

LiDAR sensors, or light detection and ranging sensors, play a key role in detecting surrounding objects and feeding the information to the car’s artificial intelligence (AI) system for self-driving capabilities. Several different flavors of LiDARs exist, including mechanical-mirror, 3D flash, and optical phase array (OPA), as well as solid-state. The latter has emerged as the most popular LiDAR type thanks to falling per-unit costs, packaging appeal, and performance.